Topic: New Comp for enthusiast! Want to order today/tomor Posted: 12 Dec 2010 at 3:11pm

Hey guys, long time no see. This comp isn't for me, its for my brother. I convinced him to be a die hard Digital Storm enthusiast, so lets welcome him to the dark side with:

468026

Thats a rough draft of the config, does anyone have any suggestions? Money is almost not an issue, he wants insane performance as hes a gamer AND developer. and the cards need to be ATI for their eyefinity tech (3xMonitor set up).

Hed also like to know if digital storm would be able to set up a dual boot system with linux and windows. Thanks!

They don't have to be ATI, Nvidia does three monitors just fine as well (better because of more GPU muscle), they're just limited to 2 monitors per video card, so you would just have to have at least 2 cards. Quad Crossfire scales horribly, you really do not want two 5970s (each card has two GPUs), I'd recommend going with triple SLI 480s or 580s.

Currently 580s are in low supply and are overpriced, at around $205 (42%) more than a 480, but they only have about 20% more performance than a 480. Up to you guys which one of those you would rather go for.

Also, you're going to need a bigger PSU. The 1200w Corsair might do, if not then the 1500w Silverstone.

I'd probably go for the Rampage III Extreme motherboard over the Classified.

Avoid VelociRaptors, they are complete crap and all marketing. The only VR that is actually faster than standard 1TB HDDs is the large 600GB model, but only by about 5%. If you want fast get an Intel SSD for the OS/apps, those are on a whole other level compared to HDDs, literately 100 times faster small file performance (around twice the performance for large files).

The Killer 2100 NIC doesn't do anything, avoid it, you don't need it wasting one of your PCIe slots. Just pay your ISP more for a better connection.

Thank you Dragoon! This is why i adore Digital Storm communities, you even crunched out the percentages for me, haha.This build has gotten a little bit out of my league now since im not up to date on the new components that were released since my last upgrade. Whos up for the challenge of building a $6.5k give or take system for me with level 6 LC, Limited to no bottlenecking of course?

Edit----

Also, i was under the impression that eyefinity renders the image to give larger view, as opposed to just scaling the same 1 monitor rendered image to fit 3 monitors. Not sure if i explained what i meant correctly, hopefully one of you geniuses understood me =P.

The GTX 570 actually just came out, and you may want to consider that in terms of graphics. It's essentially 480 performance with lower heat and noise, $90 less too. If you go with the new 5 series, LC might not that beneficial. The 5 series cards are running pretty decent vapo-chill cooling rigs stock.

Velociraptors may net you some sort of performance gain, but it's so negligible that it's not worth it in terms of money you spend. For hard drive speeds, it's go the whole hog and get a SSD, or stick with your common 7200RPM drive.

As with Dragoon is saying, I'm starting to take a liking to Asus as well. The 3.99GB outbreak with EVGA X58 boards lately has got me on edge.

I own a Killer Xeno Pro running Firmware Update 6.0, which some BFG people claimed somewhere that it was supposed to net you the performance of the Killer 2100. Had high hopes for it at first, but still, although it nets you some sort of ping advantage, it's nothing that's really significant (especially for the price). Currently, the only benefits I see from the Xeno is that the config tool it comes with allows bandwidth priority regulation for your programs, along with application blocking. The tool is especially picky, however, if the Killer NIC is at anytime disconnected during runtime, the application will fail to get any input from the NIC again regardless if it's reconnected. The tool will only be able to then get inputs again upon a restart. Overall, not worth it.

Memory fan kit, I dunno, if you're not overclocking RAM I personally see no benefit from it really. Adds a heck of a lot of noise too since it uses small fans (Rule of thumb : Smaller fans = higher noise per airflow output).

Go windows home premium. Professional only gives you the benefit of running XP mode via download, easier connection to business domains, and backup to a network drive via the built in backup utility.

Wow thanks a lot, i think im def. gonna switch to the geforce now. But since money isnt much of an issue, I'd say push the components farther to get it to that $6.5k. We're only following my brother's orders so no worries, lol. Heres the new list from me, http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=468026 What do you guys think?

(And to answer the previous post, we'd like to achieve it all, hence why hes throwing money at it, haha.) We're tech geeks, only im too busy with grad school to keep up with the market for time being. Its why im asking all my DS buddies on here for help! He loves having the latest and greatest... Hes a gaming enthusiast who loves maxing every thing out but also does lots of various kinds of development (software and other) and requires a good number cruncher/workhorse. PERFORMANCE comes first to silence and looks etc... Thanks again all! If anyone else wants a stab, im setting the budget to $6800.

You don't need dedicated PhysX cards anymore, any of the newer Nvidia cards will give you both GPU muscle and PhysX processing at the same time.

Don't get Superclocked or Black Ops versions, they're overpriced and just factory overclocked. DS will overclock them for you for free, or you can do it yourself easily enough (download MSI Afterburner, move two sliders a centimeter to the right, done).

Triple SLI 570 has a lot more muscle than dual SLI 580 and is amusingly also much cheaper, so triple SLI 570s is the clear winner.

If you don't need the HDD and you are upping the budget to $6800 then that's a $500+ gap to fill but I don't really know what else to add. I guess you can add the chipset cooling into the LCS for +$190 and a sound card of some sort.

Oh, something I forgot about. The HAF X has a bunch of optional fan slots that can be filled. Ask DS (either through email or in the notes section of your order) for additional fans to fill the optional spots, which I believe is a 1x 200mm, 1x 120mm, and 1x 80mm fan.

Lemme know how much DS quotes you for those additional fans? I'm curious to know.

Effing perfect Dragoon. You're the man! I'll find out what the extra costs for fans are since you're curious. But aside from that, whats the point of stocking up on those extra fans if every component is LCed, CPU, GPUs, and Chipset. Also, any thoughts on waiting for q1 2011 stuff to be released? I heard the new radeons are being released in a week or something.

Effing perfect Dragoon. You're the man! I'll find out what the extra costs for fans are since you're curious. But aside from that, whats the point of stocking up on those extra fans if every component is LCed, CPU, GPUs, and Chipset.

You can never have enough air flow. The water blocks cover and grab heat from the most important parts, but they don't cover everything. Your radiators will probably be internal anyway, and they can only cool down to whatever the ambient temperature around them is, so every degree you can get your case's internal ambient temperature down is another degree your LCed components can get down.

Also, any thoughts on waiting for q1 2011 stuff to be released? I heard the new radeons are being released in a week or something.

Go for it if you're not in a hurry. Hopefully the G3 Intel SSDs will be out sometime Q1 2011, but that's probably still a few months off, not worth putting the whole PC off for. The new ATIs might be worth waiting a few weeks for, but honestly I just can't stand their drivers personally. Even if a new ATI GPU came out that was both cheaper and more powerful than a 570/580, it would have to be significantly so before I would consider it, those drivers just drive me up the wall.

Lemme know how much DS quotes you for those additional fans? I'm curious to know.

Based on my dealings with DS, it should be around 20$ per fan. That's the cost of the fan itself, the installation, and the warranty upcharge. There was no cost difference for the different sizes of fan, at least not in my HAF-X.

Lemme know how much DS quotes you for those additional fans? I'm curious to know.

Based on my dealings with DS, it should be around 20$ per fan. That's the cost of the fan itself, the installation, and the warranty upcharge. There was no cost difference for the different sizes of fan, at least not in my HAF-X.

Oh thanks Tidgxor. So $60 total? I really wish Cooler Master would include those by default, blah.

I specified that I wanted all of the additional case fans, however, I only got charged for two. The ones included in my order were the 200mm fan on top and the 120mm fan in the GPU shroud. Where does the 80mm fan go? I can see if there is an empty slot in my case.

I specified that I wanted all of the additional case fans, however, I only got charged for two. The ones included in my order were the 200mm fan on top and the 120mm fan in the GPU shroud. Where does the 80mm fan go? I can see if there is an empty slot in my case.

Ah, ok. Yes, I was given the 2nd top fan, as well as the one inside the plastic shroud in the pictures above.

However, DS did not use the metal brace (I was wondering what that big metal thing in with my cables was ). I'm going to guess this was because of the PCIe slot positions (see my other thread in the Hardware forum), or because the 580s were too big.

EDIT: I just looked at the brace, I'm going to guess DS didn't use it because it requires sandwiching the two cards together.

So i should put fans on both sides of the rad for this build and request DS to mount the extra fans. Anyone with the HAF X know of the optimal positioning for its fans? Negative or positive pressure? Which fans should be intake and which fans should be exhaust? all that good stuff?

Cant i mount the 3x rad externally? I know my HAF 932 allows me to... And that's what i was saying before, my build is fully LC at stage 6, CPU all GPU, and chipset... Why do i even need an extra fan or two for ambient temps? The affect is too minuscule, i'd think, even with a 200mm.

Which chassis will allow for a push pull rad? Or what other options are there for me?

i dont think theres room in a hafx for push/pull with stage 6, it might fit 1 2x rad with push pull but thats it... OR you could mount both rads externally with some push/pull. some think that looks bad, but thats up to the individual

as far as what cases could handle it, most upper end cases could for sure, MM and DD are good choices depending on your tastes, somehting like this:

Well then, i reported everything back to my bro and he did a little of his own research regarding the GPU's, apparently the only nvidia card that has similar technology to ATI's Eyefinity is the 580... So he officially wants triple SLI 580's...i dunno, id do otherwise, but hes got the money so i wont argue...

Here is the final build,http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=468530

He just put the order in now, i'll be sure to update you guys on any interesting developments as well as nice shiny pics once its finally here!

Thanks for all the help everyone. As usual, Digital Storm community proves to be nothing short of EPIC.

apparently the only nvidia card that has similar technology to ATI's Eyefinity is the 580... So he officially wants triple SLI 580's...i dunno, id do otherwise, but hes got the money so i wont argue...

not sure at all really what that means but whats done is done, enjoy the rig.. if you can carry it inside lol

"The feature is called
Eyefinity and what it does in essence, is allow for multiple monitors
to be used as a single display. As it stands today, for the most part,
when multiple monitors are connected to a single PC, those monitors are
recognized as independent displays and can be configured for desktop
spanning or mirroring, etc. With Eyefinity, however, the displays are
arranged in a single group (or in multiple groups) and they are treated
as a single display by the OS."

Surround tech gives greater peripheral vision like eyefinity across multiple monitors, and 3d adds to depth. Also there is some 3rd party emulation software for nvidia cards that simulate eyefinity and make use of CUDA to assist.

From user reviews ive read on 3d Surround Vision, its supposed to be very next gen type of technology. Insanely immersive gaming.

Cant i mount the 3x rad externally? I know my HAF 932 allows me to... And that's what i was saying before, my build is fully LC at stage 6, CPU all GPU, and chipset... Why do i even need an extra fan or two for ambient temps? The affect is too minuscule, i'd think, even with a 200mm.Which chassis will allow for a push pull rad? Or what other options are there for me?

you can mount the fan externally, look at my build in my sig and here for more pics. I have push pull on both 3x fans, the inside top is the feser with push pull and the outside is the gtx 420 which fits 140mm fans.

We have done test with the haf before and pointing the top fans to blow air in or outward has resulted in a 2c difference in temps, aka pointless, so it does not really matter which way the blow.

Well then, i reported everything back to my bro and he did a little of his own research regarding the GPU's, apparently the only nvidia card that has similar technology to ATI's Eyefinity is the 580... So he officially wants triple SLI 580's...i dunno, id do otherwise, but hes got the money so i wont argue...

Here is the final build,http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=468530

He just put the order in now, i'll be sure to update you guys on any interesting developments as well as nice shiny pics once its finally here!

Thanks for all the help everyone. As usual, Digital Storm community proves to be nothing short of EPIC.

He is misinformed, Nvidia's 3D Vision Surround has been out and supported since first Fermi came out, the 480. Everything from even the 450 up supports it, the 450, 460, 465, 470, 480, 570, and 580.

I don't see triple 580s being worth anywhere remotely worth +$837 more than triple 570s. A 68% price hike for 20% more performance? Yikes.

VelociRaptors are crap. They are crap for the price, and they are not the the top of the line item that you have to pay a premium for, ergo you are paying the ridiculous premium for marketing.

When you have options that perform virtually identically but cost 5 times less (7200RPM HDD), options that perform better and cost less (hybrid drive), and options that perform 100 times better and only cost slightly more (SSDs), then seriously they are just crap. And those are just the simple alternatives, if you wanted to get a little creative you could just get a cheap PCIe RAID card with some onboard cache and bam, any drive you use on it performs vastly better than a VR (same idea behind a hybrid drive, but DRAM instead of SSD NAND, which is like 30+ times faster).

There are far too many other options that are either cheaper, perform better, or both, VR's just get marketed better. Stop trying to justify to yourself your purchase of VRs. So you wasted money on them, so what? Live and learn. Stop trying to recommend such a terrible storage option to other people.

Sure it is, there are just different levels of crap. While I'm glad it doesn't cost 5 times more than similar offerings and fail more often, its ridiculous price premium still puts it well into the crap category.

I'm not here to argue the definition of crap, I'm just letting people know VRs are a Really Dumb Ideaâ„¢.

Crap to me is hardware with higher than average failures, or significant drawbacks...the Raptors only drawback is the price point.

And thanks for calling me dumb I purchased one, Im happy with the purchase and when the G3 600GB SSD becomes available I'll swap it out :

Velociraptor drives = Good hardware at a bad price.

By the way the price for a 600GB VR = roughly $260I would advise anyone with budget issues not get a Velociraptor drive, if you arent worried about a few bucks here or there go for it...or wait for the 600GB G3 SSD coming hopefully early next year.

Lemme clarify, The reason for him getting 3 580's isnt because of three monitors. Hes well aware he can do it with two. Reason he got it was simple, hes a techy elitist that has a job that pays him too much damn money, lmao.

He likes to save if the option is there, but when DS upped their discount from 10% to 15%, he just decided to go for 3 (we were gonna do 2x SLI 570's before, as per my suggestion).

As for the HDD's, we swapped the VR to an SSD almost immediately, lol.

And yes he was misinformed as to which nvidia cards had the technology, i looked it up myself later and you guys are 100% correct. Basically all 400 and 500 series cards can support it. I don't remember if there were any exceptions, but it didn't matter at the time.

Either way it wont matter since it was either gonna be the 570 or the 580. He got the 580's instead cause he got the added 5% discount which didn't really raise the price enough to bother him.

All in all hes incredibly happy now and we have you guys to thank for the help, BTW DST4ME, i showed off your build to my bro and he almost gasmed on the spot. I was following the forums for your build for about a year now and im so happy that you finally got it fully functional. You honestly have the patience of a saint because if i was in your shoes id have bought a ticket to cali and brought that monster home myself, haha!

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